HOLLY SPRINGS - For the first time in 30 years, Councilman Parrish Womble - the only black representative of this once-majority black town - won't be running for elected office.

Womble, who was the town's first black mayor in 2000 and Wake County's first black sheriff's deputy in the 1960s, is one of the only current council members to have witnessed Holly Springs' turn from a stagnating town to a fast-growing suburban satellite.

The town had no sewer or water system, few stores and a population of about 700 when Womble won election to the town's governing board in 1981.

Today, with 25,000 people in the town, it's a different place. He's satisfied with who might take his place, and he's ready to take a break.

"I feel great, I feel great," Womble, 71, said Friday as the candidate-filing deadline approached. "This is my hometown. I was born and raised here. That's why I worked so hard to get it up to where it is."

His departure may make room for another witness to small-town history: Gerald Holleman, a 74-year-old long-time mayor of Holly Springs, has filed for the town's open seats.

Holleman also entered elected service in the early 1980s, after a decade away from town.

"When I came back to Holly Springs, I couldn't believe, 15 miles from the state capital, here is a bunch of people living in a third-world country," Holleman said.

The town's population had stagnated for a decade before he and Womble served their early years.

Former tenant farmers had lost their work beginning in the 1950s and moved onto ramshackle lots, scraping for jobs, said Holleman, who ran for mayor again two years ago.

"Most people moved away because there was no work to do around here," Holleman said.

Many residents used outdoor toilets and lacked running water even as the nation linked into the first year of MTV.

And the people who made up the majority of the town were not engaged in its government.

They may even have been intimidated by the powerful families that ran the town, Holleman said.

Roots of change

Womble was the only black elected official on a board of five when he first won election, almost opposite the divide of the town's population, he said. In those days before the town's population boom, Womble led the way for black politicians. By 1987, most of the town's board members were black.

The town gained momentum in the years after Womble's election.

He and other council members found a grant that brought sewer service to the town in 1987 - which spawned the town's growth.

"We were tired of running into Fuquay and Apex every time you wanted to get you a hot dog," Womble said. "Now, we don't have to do that."

By the end of the decade, subdivisions and a golf course were in the works. He hit the first shot at Sunset Ridge in 1989, he said.

Later, he brought the law to Holly Springs. In 1992, when the town didn't have more than $60,000 in reserves, Womble convinced the board to spend $50,000 creating its police department, according to former police chief Cecil Parker.

Just before the vote that created the police force, an auditor told the town it couldn't afford its first police officer.

"Womble said, 'You know what, we can't afford not to do it,' " said Parker, now the town's fire chief. "The town council voted for it and we have never slowed down since."

Womble also pushed for establishing the town's first modern middle school.

Womble was appointed mayor in 2000, when Holleman resigned after 17 years in the position.

He lost a mayoral election to Dick Sears, the current Holly Springs mayor.

Womble won council election in 2003.

And if he doesn't like his successor, Womble said, he might just run again.